The Primal Kitchen Podcast

Elle Russ chats with PaleoPorn.com co-founder Marla Sarris.  After dedicating six years to teaching at one of the nation's top high schools, Marla left her career to pursue a healthier, sustainable lifestyle.  She discovered paleo in 2009 and continues to indulge her passion for teaching through PaleoPorn.com and her cookbooks - Pigskin Paleo and the upcoming Paleo MX (Authentic Paleo Mexican Recipes). When she's not in the kitchen, Marla makes up one-third of SPYR, a brand development agency. She is Executive Producer of the #1 indie documentary of 2016, Minimalism: A Documentary About The Important Things and co-creator of the meditation course Week of Zen.  Use code Primal20 for 20% off the Week of Zen course.

As I discussed last month, depression is the yin to anxiety’s yang. Between these two troublemakers, they’ve got dark clouds hanging over both the past and the future, making the present moment complicated at best (and for some people unbearable). Taken as a human composite, it’s an unfortunate trade-off for being cognitively complex. As individuals, however, we naturally just want a solution. The problem is, there’s just so many confounding factors surrounding depression that it’s hard to know where to start. Your mind is an infinitely complex latticework of moving parts; one which continues to baffle and divide the scientific community. How does a practitioner prescribe suitable treatments for a problem they don’t fully comprehend? And, yet, medical science often (and perhaps inevitably) works with incomplete information. (This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)

At the onset of our annual 21-Day Challenge this past January, I offered up a post that proposed thinking small—“41 Primal Action Items and Individual Experiments for Success in 2017.” The idea here wasn’t shrinking our scope to the exclusion of big visioning, but homing in on the day to day aims we can set for ourselves that make the big changes happen. (This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)

Elle Russ chats with Genevieve Howland, author of The Mama Natural: Week to Week Guide to Pregnancy & Childbirth - the modern (and yet ancient) approach to pregnancy and childbirth. “Natural” recognizes that pregnancy and birth are normal, and that having a baby is a wondrous biological process and rite of passage—not a medical condition.
 Full of weekly advice and tips, Howland covers vital pregnancy nutrition, natural remedies for common concerns, as well as the appropriate (and inappropriate) use of medical interventions. Peppered throughout are positive birth and pregnancy stories from women of all backgrounds (and all stages of their natural journey) along with advice and insights from a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) plus a Registered Nurse (RN), doula, and lactation consultant. With over sixty million views on her YouTube channel, Genevieve Howland’s funny but informational videos have empowered millions of women to embrace natural pregnancy and parenting.

With Memorial Day come and gone, we’re rounding the corner to summer. Even in the northern-most regions of the country, farmers markets are back (if they ever closed where you live). Ten years ago when I started MDA, they were still a rarity in most parts of the country, but times have changed. Farmers markets aren’t just about local, seasonal produce. Sure, that’s a great reason to show up every week, but I’d argue also for some of the less noted (in some cases even less tangible) benefits of hitting these markets. (This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)

Serotonin is a major regulator of mood and depression risk. These are important, vital roles, to be sure. Your mood describes how you experience and interpret the world. If it’s consistently bad, you’regoing to have a rough time. Yet, serotonin is much more than the “feel-good hormone.” It also influences sexual desire and helps us remember. It’s the precursor to melatonin, the neurotransmitter that allows us to sleep. (This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)

Mark Sisson chats with Sarah Ballantyne, Ph.D. about her newest book Paleo Principles.  Sarah is the creator of the award-winning online resource ThePaleoMom.com, cohost of the syndicated top-rated The Paleo View Podcast; New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Approach, The Paleo Approach Cookbook and The Healing Kitchen, and creator of the online program Go To Bed. Sarah earned her doctorate degree in medical biophysics at the age of 26 and spent the next four years doing research on critical care medicine, innate immunity, gene therapy and cell biology, earning a variety of awards for research excellence along the way.   Sarah’s transition from academic researcher to stay-at-home mom to award-winning and internationally-recognized health advocate and educator was driven by her own health journey, which included losing 120 pounds and using both diet and lifestyle to mitigate and reverse a dozen diagnosed health conditions. As a scientist both by training and by nature, Sarah is deeply interested in understanding how the foods we eat interact with our gut barriers, immune systems, and hormones to influence health. Sarah’s innate curiosity goes further than just understanding diet and she is also deeply interested in the impact of lifestyle factors like sleep, stress and activity. Her passion for scientific literacy and her talent for distilling scientific concepts into straightforward and accessible explanations form the foundation of her work and her dedication to improving public health. Learn more by checking out Sarah’s website, podcast and books. You can also find Sarah on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

While I don’t recommend making Primalized versions of grain-based foods a staple, the fact remains that people love them. They’re going to want them. There’s not much you can do about that. And if we want to incorporate pancakes, muffins, cookies, and other flour-based items into our diets without ruining everything we’ve worked toward, we need the healthiest, most Primal flours. The alternative flour market has exploded in recent years. A decade ago, you had gritty almond flour and fibrous coconut flour, and that was about it. Today, there are many more flours to sift through. But what are the best ones? Which ones fit best into a Primal way of eating, and why? (This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)

In response to my post on oral health a few weeks ago, one reader offered a comment about the oral biome, and it’s a worthy follow-up, I’d say. The human oral cavity is home to hundreds of microorganisms. Latest estimates place the number of bacterial species in your mouth at close to 700, with the odd fungus, protozoa and even virus thrown in for good measure. This oral microbiome isn’t a whole lot different than that of our gut, but where things get interesting is when we consider the diverse range of habitats within the mouth: teeth, tongue, cheeks, gums, tonsils. All provide different living conditions for those microorganisms that colonize them, but that diversity of habitats also encourages a diversity of species. (This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)

Wheat gets a bad rap in the alternative health sphere, receiving blame from all sides. Today, I’m here to provide the other side. Today, I’m going to give you seven solid reasons to love wheat, ranging from its effects on the environment, its role in the foundation of the American republic, its effect on gut bacteria and your health, its ability to stamp out hatred, its protective role in the lives of Bronze Age Chinese women, and its status as an enduring symbol of human rights and prosperity. (This Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Leaman)